http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com --
OUR nation's leaders have told us over and over, in the
months since Sept. 11, that we should make every effort
to get back to our regular way of doing things.

I often work with a Tribune copy editor named Bill
O'Connell. One weekend afternoon I phoned in from
outside the office, and was going over some questions
Bill had about the column. I told him I would call him an
hour later to make certain the column was ready to go to
press.

When I called back, his voice sounded different. I asked
him why.

Bill is 48. Thirty years ago his father, Dale G. O'Connell
Sr., had died of cancer. To honor his father, Bill has
spent the last three years writing a private book for his
family, about his late father's life as a teacher and a
coach in New England and the Midwest.

This fall, Bill decided to take his 84-year-old mother,
Estelle O'Connell, on a personal "book tour" late in her
life -- on a trip to visit all the places that had meant so
much to the O'Connell family. The trip was to be a
celebration of the late Mr. O'Connell.

Bill wanted to take his mom to the schools where Mr.
O'Connell taught and coached, to the old arenas where
he played basketball, to the house he finally got to call
home after stops at 18 foster homes.

Mrs. O'Connell, who lives in Joliet, was not afraid to fly
after the terror attacks. She dressed all in red, white and
blue for the flight she and Bill would take from Midway
Airport. There was nothing -- no terrorist, no government
warning -- that was going to stop her from savoring this
trip.

Bill and his mom flew to New Hampshire, and started a
driving tour of all the places that had touched his father's
life. To the family home in small-town Maine, to the high
school where Mr. O'Connell taught biology and coached
the track team to three state championships, to the city
where Mr. O'Connell was born, to the home of an old
friend who had been a high school football teammate
and then a fellow member of the U.S. Army Air Corps.

Every step of the way, Bill took photos to illustrate the
personal book he had spent three years writing for his
family, photos of the places that have meant so much to the O'Connells. In many of the
photos, Mrs. O'Connell posed. Some were lighthearted -- Mrs. O'Connell standing next
to the Uncle Sam totem pole in a town where Mr. O'Connell once scored a
gymnasium-record 48 points in a basketball game. Some of the photos were wistful --
a swimming hole where Mr. O'Connell was a lifeguard in 1937, at the age of 19. Some
were melancholy -- Mr. O'Connell's gravesite.

When Bill and his mom returned to Illinois, Mrs. O'Connell was overjoyed, proud. She
went home to Joliet feeling fulfilled. Bill had the photos developed.

And now it was the weekend that Bill and I were working on the column. I made that
one last call of the day to him, and, hearing his voice, asked what was wrong.

He had gone down to his car, parked in an outdoor lot close to the newspaper office.
Someone had broken in.

The thieves apparently had been after a bag of clothes they could see through the car
windows. There were some shirts Bill had bought, and some shoes.

They took the clothes, all right. And they took something else:

All the photos. Every picture Bill had taken on the trip with his mother to celebrate his
late father's life. Every picture, and every negative.

They're gone. In this new world we allegedly are living in, with renewed respect for
everyone around us, and new recognition of the preciousness of small and loving
moments, someone had decided to do what some people have always done: take
something just because they can. Hurt someone just because they can. Grab
something and run just because they can. The way they always have.

Bill, of course, is sick at heart. When I last spoke with him, he still had not told his
mother that the photos are gone, and that he has no idea how to find them.

We keep being told that we should go back to the kind of lives we were leading before
Sept. 11, in the kind of world in which we lived before Sept. 11. Business as usual, just
like before -- that, we are told, should be what we strive for.

I certainly hope
not.

JWR contributor Bob Greene is a novelist and columnist. Send your comments to him by clicking here.